


(Ex/Ac)cept

by scrawly_times



Category: Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons), Trollhunters - Daniel Kraus & Guillermo del Toro
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Blood and Injury, Dictatious Whump, Dictatious gets beat tf up that's all u need to kno for now, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Permanent Injury, Starvation, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Vomiting, Whump, my dumb ass keeps forgetting to add fics to the correct fandom tags kill me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23995084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrawly_times/pseuds/scrawly_times
Summary: Several hundred years of trauma in the Darklands either definitely prepared him for this or absolutely didn't, Dictatious isn't sure.Warning! Whump! Torture! Hurt/Comfort! Read at your own risk!
Comments: 9
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all, I've been talking on tumblr for Months about this fic. It's got about 10k written so far - a lot of it needs to be edited, but I've been wanting to get this first chunk up for a while 
> 
> LET IT BE KNOWN, I HAVE WARNED Y'ALL. This is a gross ass fic. Enjoy the gnarliness. Have fun and be safe chitlins. <3 
> 
> Chapter warnings are found in tags. Also be warned: Dictatious Is Not In A Good Mental Place. Suicidal Inclinations are gonna be present throughout this fic. Be careful!

He didn’t know who they were. Not that it was particularly questionable why they were attacking _him_ of all beings, with his record. He was more surprised he hadn’t been assaulted _before_ this moment with the number of beings who probably wanted him dead.

So no, Dictatious was _not_ surprised at all when during a brief midnight excursion to pilfer the neighbors’ trash for anything vaguely appetizing he found himself surrounded. Larger trolls crowded around him; mostly just giant blurs in his faint vision but their smells were quite distinctive. 

Dictatious merely sighed and tapped his walking stick against the concrete. 

“Can I help you gentlemen?” Dictatious snarked dryly, ears twitching. He replaced the trash can lid he’d been sniffing and tried to pay attention to the heavy footsteps around him. He couldn’t get an exact number but there were certainly more than four or five. Way too many to fight even if he _weren’t_ blind. 

He didn’t get a response, a heavy fist slamming into his head and knocking him over. Dictatious grunted mildly and tried to get back to his feet, one hand reaching out to try and find where his walking stick had flown. 

The punch hadn’t actually been that bad - Gunmar hit harder in a _good_ mood truthfully - but the metal clad foot stomping down on his hand with a horrendous _crunch_ definitely did. Dictatious made a stifled yelp but froze rather than struggle. He couldn’t see them besides vague blurs and he didn’t want to risk another movement and their possible anger. 

“I assume this is not a social visit.” Dictatious pulled his injured hand in close when the foot lifted away. He couldn’t move it without hearing crumbling noises from broken stone. He hoped he didn’t lose any fingers. He’d been _very_ careful over the centuries to avoid the loss of fingers above all else. Maybe it would’ve been better to focus on his eyesight, but he’d always cherished his ability to _write._

All Dictatious heard in response to his sarcasm was a snort and sneer before metal hit his head with a loud _crack_ and everything went dark.

* * *

Dictatious awoke to a splitting pain in his head and more darkness than usual. Usually his vision was at least blurry lights and sometimes colors if he was lucky. Now it was just black. 

“You know, it’s rather foolish to blindfold a blind troll.” He croaked, twisting around to try and get his bearings. Cloth tied to his face, limbs bound, and his very broken arm screaming _almost_ as much pain at him as the broken horn on top of his throbbing head. How hard had they hit him? 

His snark was met with a blow to the back of the head and he restrained a wheeze before it escaped. He managed to keep it down to a gusty sigh. 

“Put the traitor down, this should be fine.” A perfectly ordinary voice said, nothing Dictatious could use to possibly pin their identity down. “Make sure he’s _comfortable.”_

Dictatious was promptly hurtled through the air and into a wall, falling to the floor and grunting as the air was pushed out of him with each impact. He wriggled up into a sitting position easily. 

“Kidnapping? A bit cliche, don’t you think?” Dictatious hummed faux carelessly. “Better to just slaughter me in some dark corner and get it done with, hrm? Less fuss.” 

Oh, had he _waited_ for this. Maybe Blinkous hadn’t cared to end his life, and Dictatious was far too cowardly to do it himself, but he _knew_ someone’s misplaced sense of justice would strike eventually. Though with the entirety of Trollmarket galavanting off across the country he thought it would have taken a while longer. Perhaps out of towners? 

“We’re not here to kill you.” That single voice said, the rest of the trolls present apparently wise enough not to speak. “We’re here to make you _wish_ you were dead.” The malice in their voice was laughable. Were they trying to be _intimidating?_

Dictatious laughed even if it sent throbs of pain through his head. “Rather late on that sentiment I’m afraid. Spend a few centuries in the Darklands and you get rather _used_ to the thought.” 

“Then I’m sure you’ll feel right at home.” The voice was right in his ear and Dictatious jumped. _That_ startled him, always, the inability to know where people _were_ around him. Claws grabbed one of his ears, pulling him up to his feet. “Let’s show the traitorous scum what we _think_ of Gumm-Gumms.” 

Dictatious sighed with disappointment. “I’m not even going to be killed with _wit?_ Truly a tragedy.” 

His ear was promptly ripped off. Dictatious repressed his sudden whine more on reflex than any conscious effort. He felt the aching tear rapidly become the least of his concerns. 

The gathered trolls seemed to not realize the amount of beatings and fights a troll got in when stuck in the hellscape called the Darklands. Their beating was painful but hardly anything _unique._

They kept their voices down, sticking to snarls and growls while they kicked and pummeled him into walls. Dictatious didn’t make a single sound of pain. He couldn’t. He hadn’t cried out from a beating in centuries and he wasn’t going to start now no matter what. 

He only spoke. It was the only weapon he had anymore against a world he couldn’t see or understand. His words were all he _had._

They did not like that.

* * *

Dictatious couldn’t hear out of his right ear very much. It was crushed and smashed into his head, muffled growls the only thing he could hear through it. His left ear was the one they had ripped off. The jagged remainder of it was starting to swell and close up, making it hard to hear out of that one as well. There was a ringing somewhere in the distance that he was certain was from his inner ears. 

After too many of his dull, unconcerned comments during his torture one of the trolls took a metal bludgeon to his face just to shut him up. Dictatious thought it was probably the weapon that had knocked him out earlier. It wasn’t sharp, no, but his fangs shattered and ripped into his mouth and gums with every blow. 

Now his jaw hurt and _shifted_ wrongly every time he tried to open his mouth. Sassing them was off the table and it was more _frustrating_ than anything else. Oh yes, the pain made him want to curl into a ball and whine for help, but Dictatious was too stubborn and cynical to _care_ at this point in his life. 

The loss of his sole way to _fight back_ was more of a blow, filling him with hopeless bitterness.

* * *

Every injury combined and twisted into a single throbbing unit of pain. 

Perhaps even more painful than any of the wounds that he’d received in the Darklands, if only because Gunmar wanted his advisor alive and well enough to _speak._ He needed Dictatious’s wit even when he was furious enough to beat him half to death. 

They certainly kept up the beating for quite some time, probably since they had multiple trolls who wanted their fair share of justice. He lost track of that time, lost track of injuries, of pain, of the voices, growls, and taunts. 

Dictatious eventually gave up even trying to get up in between attacks. His right knee was downright shattered, not able to hold any of his weight. Getting up was a waste of time when he would be on the ground again a moment later. 

His arm - which one? They all hurt, stars, he didn’t think any part of him _didn’t._ The arm- the first arm they’d gone for, the one that had been crushed, it was _gone._ He couldn’t feel it. Broken, shattered, crumbled, and ripped away. Or maybe it was still there and he just couldn’t tell? All he knew was it was - an upper arm, damnit - nothing but another spike of pain on his very busy radar. 

They kept going.

* * *

Dictatious came to a stop against some sort of wall, back sending disturbing cracking sensations throughout his whole body. 

“I think that’s enough. Without help he’ll never crawl his way out of here.” 

The voice was muffled and faded through the rushing in Dictatious’s head. 

He tilted his head towards the voice, trying to follow it. 

“You know what, the traitor’s already blind, might as well make him deaf, right?” 

Dictatious felt a shiver go down his spine and cringed away as hands grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him into the ground, holding him down. He couldn’t struggle much anymore but they didn’t even give him room to breath.

He finally let out a small whine when they clumsily took something sharp to the sides of his head, slashing and stabbing and _digging_ into him. 

The true center of his ears were deep within his head, not common knowledge about his tribe of trolls, so he doubted their mangling was truly permanent. But the blood and cuts were more than enough to clog up his outer ears. He couldn’t hear anything past the rushing of his head. 

He could only feel the faint movement of troll feet nearby, vibrating through the stone. His jaw was clearly broken and he couldn’t do anything but slobber bile and spittle down his chin. His nose was broken from blows to the face and all he could smell was his own blood. 

And when they ripped off his blindfold, all he could see was the faint blurry figures standing over him. He couldn’t see, smell, or hear _anything._

Dictatious felt like breaking and finally crying out then. But he didn’t. 

Because he’d spent hundreds of years having that sort of reaction forced out of him. Because he was too prideful. Because with any luck these trolls would finish the job and finally end his miserable, useless existence. 

The ropes tying his aching hands into a single, painful knot were cut. Dictatious felt his blood run cold. 

He lifted his head, barely able to pick it off the ground, to watch distant blurs and lights moving away from him. 

They weren’t… killing him. They were leaving him here to _die._ Dictatious let out a pained growl, protesting, because for fucks’ sake could they not just let him be _done_ already? 

A passing troll gave him one final kick to the chest as a parting shot and then there was _nothing._ Dictatious crawled after them for only a few feet before his aching, broken limbs wouldn’t move him anymore. 

No no no, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be! Dictatious breathed in haggardly and let it out, coughing blood from his mangled mouth. 

He was supposed to be killed. He was supposed to finally be _done._ Dictatious had outlived his use for Gunmar, failed his brother, betrayed his kind, and had been nothing but a filthy _leech_ on the Trollhunters who had dared let him live. 

He wasn’t supposed to be _alive._ He didn’t _want_ to be. Not when he had lost the beauty of reading written words, not when he had been rendered useless as an advisor, not when he had to be shuffled blindly through human houses as a helpless blind old troll in need of _mercy._ He knew while the Trollmarket trolls were gone the likelihood of someone taking revenge would be small. He’d planned to merely wait and enjoy his time in peace in Arcadia while he had it. Had planned to fully enjoy the end when it came no matter how painful, as it would likely be _swift._

Dictatious did not take kindly to life changing his plans. 

Then again, he considered as he coughed up yet another lungful of gore. He was hardly going to _survive_ this. His death was merely… prolonged. 

Prolonged, yes. A fitting suffering for a traitor and an old fool. Perhaps his abductors had some good ideas after all, he thought bitterly. 

Dictatious closed his blind eyes and breathed out, feeling consciousness filtering away with every ragged breath. Hopefully he would not wake up again. Maybe he could bleed out and crumble in his sleep.


	2. (Help Me) Don't?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dictatious realized a few confused minutes later that the wetness on his face wasn’t his own blood or the cave roof dripping water on him. He was crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *quiet cackling* Wow y'all really did enjoy that first chapter.... haha sorry Dictatious is still gonna suffer from here on out 
> 
> Don't worry things will work out eventually! probably 
> 
> Chapter Specific Warnings: Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, graphic descriptions of injury and vomiting, mentions of starvation

Dictatious, unfortunately, woke up again. 

He had no idea how much time had passed - hours, days - but there was a familiar hunger and aching in his stomach. 

After having spent so long clinging to life to live despite the destitution of the Darklands, he was going to eventually keel over due to  _ starvation?  _ Dictatious was disgusted with himself. He’d rather bleed out first. 

It was ironic, at least. The Darklands had damaged him so badly it was fitting it would be a remnant of that hellscape that did him in. 

The ‘Nancy’ human had insisted on feeding him well; even if she wasn’t always happy about it she made a strong effort to make sure none went hungry under her care. Dictatious had never told her that human food did not fill him up in the slightest - as tasty as it was to his damaged tastebuds, human food was not nutritious or healthy for a troll. The bits and scraps of troll acceptable fare he ate in between her ‘meals’ was hardly enough to keep him sustained. But it was all he could eat. 

It was difficult to find food in the Darklands unless you hunted it yourself. Dictatious was not precisely a grand hunter, nor was anything in the Darklands particularly nutritious, so his stomach was long since shrunken and malformed. Dictatious almost couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t starving or sick from something that he shouldn't have eaten, but was all he  _ had. _ Long ago memories of ‘better times’ were hard to dig up when centuries of starvation overlaid them. 

But no,  _ now  _ when Dictatious had free  _ access  _ to whatever delicacies he wanted, his stomach was so used to having nothing it refused to keep anything down. Nearly everything he tried to eat came up a short while later. It made having any sort of attempt at feeding his malnourished body surely regrettable. 

At this point Dictatious was convinced life contrived to make him as miserable as possible. Especially considering that despite the agony  _ radiating  _ through every  _ miniscule inch _ of his body, Dictatious could  _ not  _ get rid of the sheer uncomfortableness of laying on his side on a hard stone floor. 

He opened his eyes two at a time, taking in the darkness around him with a tired sort of experience. There were no sources of light around him to even  _ pretend _ he could see by. It was a dreadful sort of pitch black he'd gotten far too used to. 

Dictatious grunted as he rolled - flopped weakly, more like - onto his back. It still hurt like hell but at least broken arms weren’t being jabbed into his bruised sides. 

He wasn’t sure how long he stared into pitch blackness, mind completely and utterly blank for the first time in his life; waiting. 

And waiting. 

And still not dying. 

Not yet, apparently. 

Dictatious closed his eyes. Not that it made much difference. The action only highlighted how dry his eyes were right now. Even the slide of his eyelids over dry eyes was a miniature torture in a maelstrom of pain.

* * *

He had probably blacked out again, but Dictatious could have sworn he heard voices in the distance. Whispering and echoing through his head enough to make it pound. 

That was a ridiculous idea though. His ears were so stopped up with gore and swelling he could only hear his own faltering heartbeat. And only when he  _ strained  _ to hear it. 

A dream, then. Especially with the anxious, jittery shudders the echoing kept giving him. 

Dictatious sighed with a raspy breath and wondered when he would start outright hallucinating from the pain. Perhaps he’d already reached that point? 

He wondered mildly if Nancy would ever stop pretending that he hadn’t eaten some of her cats. Just a few of them, at least, until he’d thrown up the remains too many times. The taste had been worth it at first but Dictatious got tired of trying to hide half digested cat remains. Nancy  _ knew  _ he’d eaten them, the human woman was far too shrewd not to, but it had been an amusing enough game of dodging the matter between them that she never truly pressed. Oh she threatened his wellbeing over it but he was pretty sure she was used to her cats disappearing randomly. 

Dictatious knew Tobias suspected he’d eaten some of the cats. The boy was under the amusing impression that Nancy wasn't aware. He wondered if the child would be glad for his demise. 

...hard to say, with that human. Sometimes the child could be absolutely ruthless. Other times strangely merciful. Dictatious often questioned why on  _ earth  _ the human let  _ him  _ live under his roof with his caretaker. Even with the infamous Aaarrrgghh defending his home, Tobias had no assurance Dictatious would not cause trouble. Even a blind old troll could do damage before being caught. 

Mercy meant weakness or dismissal to trolls. Humans had such different beliefs and methods that it baffled the mind. 

...ugh, was Dictatious really laying in a cave  _ dying  _ and spending his last moments reminiscing about human culture? He  _ must _ be reaching the hallucination stages. 

…...but despite his attempts to not think anything disgustingly sentimental, Dictatious couldn’t stop himself from thinking of Blinkous. That buffoon would probably cry when he found out Dictatious had died. Or laugh and celebrate, it was hard to tell with his brother. 

It wasn’t as if Dictatious didn’t  _ deserve  _ the contention but Blinkous had always been such a pleasant, forgiving whelp. It was  _ interesting  _ seeing him so furious and vengeful at an older age. Truly it was a shock Dictatious had needed. 

Dictatious knew a great number of things. He knew secret routes throughout the Darklands, could predict Gunmar’s every intention, had written treatises quoted by scholars the world round, memorized war strategies and ancient anecdotes from tomes few trolls would ever gaze upon. But Dictatious often forgot to keep in mind that even he could not know  _ everything.  _

He could never truly know his brother and it was honestly and truly  _ frustrating.  _ Blinkous defied understanding and expectation at every turn. 

Blinkous? Training a Trollhunter?  _ Successfully?  _

Taming the terrible general Aaarrrgghh? Creating a lifelong bond of friendship with the one creature who had once been below only  _ Gunmar  _ in brutality and fury? 

Succeeding  _ Vendel  _ as Elder of Trollmarket was perhaps the most bizarre thing Blinkous had achieved. There were numerous other trolls Dictatious would personally have entrusted that sort of role to before his…  _ excitable _ brother. And yet. 

...and yet. 

Look at what Blinkous had achieved. 

There was a tiny, infinitesimal shred of pride in Dictatious for his little brother.  _ Leading  _ trolls himself was not something Dictatious had ever succeeded in. And yet Blinkous led trolls into battle against Gunmar’s armies and  _ won.  _ From what news Tobias regularly passed on, Blinkous  _ continued  _ leading those trolls successfully on the road to New Jersey despite many setbacks and difficulties. 

It was  _ absolutely  _ sentimental and disgusting but Dictatious supposed he was allowed to think of such inane things on his deathbed. Quietly, he was perhaps a little proud of his brother. 

Dictatious fell into unconsciousness again.

* * *

When he woke up again his back ached so badly he almost couldn’t breathe. Then he realized he actually  _ couldn’t  _ breathe from the blood stopping up his throat. 

Dictatious rolled over onto his belly and  _ heaved,  _ frantically coughing up the blood and spittle that had trickled down to clog up his throat lungs. It was the most painful experience of his  _ life.  _

He gasped for breath between every cough, jaw unable to even close anymore. Drool and gore dripped down his chin with every raspy choke. He wasn’t even sure where his mouth  _ was _ anymore it was swollen and so mashed together, all he knew was that the blood was coming up  _ somewhere.  _ The pain had fused his body parts into one incoherent vesicle of throbbing agony. 

_ Everything _ felt broken and pulverized into pieces. The longer he lived the worse the pain got, ruminating in itself like a noxious  _ marinade  _ of misery. It was all starting to blend together into a consistent haze of agony throughout his entire body. 

Why? Why did he have to  _ suffer  _ like this? Was he not already paying for his hubris? 

His face felt wet. Dictatious opened his eyes, looking at nothingness. He was facedown on rock and his broken jaw did not approve. 

Dictatious realized a few confused minutes later that the wetness on his face wasn’t his own blood or the cave roof dripping water on him. He was crying. 

He laid there for a while longer hazily trying to puzzle together his body’s reaction. Was it the pain? It really  _ was  _ terrible, the worst he’d ever felt, so that could certainly be it. His mind almost refused to work past the agony at this point. 

The truth occurred to him some unidentifiable time later. 

Dictatious… didn’t want this to be his end. 

Oh he certainly didn’t  _ want  _ to be  _ alive _ , that was for sure, and he wouldn’t entirely mind if he happened to finally die right now. Especially if it meant an end to this pain. 

But Dictatious was hit by the sudden realization that he still didn’t  _ want to die.  _

It was a bizarre thought, to be truthful, for a troll who had spent centuries with death at his door and fighting it off every step of the way. For some reason… he’d forgotten that a monumental part of staying alive was in fact  _ wanting  _ to be. Dictatious had spent far too long clinging to life to remember why. 

But  _ why?  _ Why did he still cling to life even in the smallest way? His life was forfeit in so many ways, there was no chance of him surviving his current situation. What possessed him to possibly even  _ wish  _ he could?

* * *

Dictatious took a wheezing breath in, realizing he’d jolted awake. When had he fallen asleep? 

He didn’t think he even had a body anymore, he was just made of pain. 

But he still wasn’t dead. 

Well. 

Perhaps that was a sign in and of itself. 

Not even sure what he was doing, or  _ how  _ he was doing it, Dictatious forced himself to his feet. His three remaining arms didn’t work properly at his command and hung loosely at his sides. One of his legs was too shattered to hold his weight properly. His other leg was so weak he shook and only barely forced himself to lean against the stone wall before he fell. 

Everything hurt. So, so much. Dictatious would have been ashamed to know he was whimpering and rasping in pain but he didn’t even notice. Everything was too fuzzy, too overwhelmed by the cloud of pain pain pain and  _ move.  _

He started walking, hands feeling and scraping against the stone wall painfully. 

If he wasn’t dead already then he supposed he wasn’t going to die anytime soon. 

Might as well get out of this blasted cave.

* * *

Life had become nothing but move move move. There was no brainpower left to think of anything else. There was nothing else he could do other than push one limb in front of the other, even being unable to tell what limbs were where or even if they  _ were _ moving. 

He kept walking. 

He was nothing else, right now, nothing but pain and fuzzy  _ move move move _ and the distant knowledge that if he didn't, he was never leaving. 

It was slow going, one clumsy foot in front of the other. His legs weren't responding correctly and he nearly tipped over with every movement. 

He kept walking. 

He didn't know if he would make it out anymore. Truthfully Dictatious wasn't even conscious anymore. Between pain and blood loss he was more almost… sleepwalking. Some last desperate will to live - or just  _ die  _ somewhere he wasn't  _ alone _ and lost - drove him on. 

He kept walking.

* * *

The cave Dictatious had been abducted to was deep and dark. It was a series of twisting tunnels that few trolls knew existed, far on the outskirts of Trollmarket. It used to be a place where trolls would transport questionable substances in and out of the market. There were no light crystals, no signs, no guiding carvings along the walls. 

Dictatious didn’t stand a chance of finding his way out. Not blind, deaf, starving, and crippled. But he was also old, stubborn, and used to pushing past the complaints of his body against all the odds. 

He made it surprisingly far. 

Which meant that the small search party looking for clues about his whereabouts could smell the blood and gore dripping from his trail. 

More specifically, that  _ Aaarrrgghh’s  _ sensitive nose could smell it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cackles a little bit louder* 
> 
> Thank you guys for showing this story some love and attention! I promise it'll get more angsty before it's over with! 
> 
> I think my favorite part about Dictatious as a character is that we're given so LITTLE of his motivations and backstory, which is ODD compared to many other characters. He's presented to the audience as basically Evil Blinky Clone. While it's suspicious as hell compared to Trollhunters' other good character arcs (I'm HOPING and praying for more of this dict in Wizards) it means I have SO MUCH fun to play with. 
> 
> And trust me guys, there's SO MUCH to play with when it comes to an 'evil' character that we see actively choose "I'm going to do the right thing but mostly only for my own protection" 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed! <3

**Author's Note:**

> DO FEEL FREE to stop by my tumblr @weregreatatcrime to see some arts and shit, I've got a lil comic set in the future of this fic that I did ages ago!


End file.
